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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla: Lionel Messi is evidently going back to China, after Inter Miami took advantage of not making the Major League Soccer playoffs by signing a deal to play two exhibitions there next month.
The team said it would play a pair of friendlies against Chinese Super League teams, first in Qingdao, China against Qingdao Hainiu on Nov. 5 and then against Chengdu Rongcheng in Chengdu, China on Nov. 8. Those two stadiums can both hold between 50,000 and 60,000 fans.
Those dates coincide with the first round of the MLS playoffs. Inter Miami was eliminated from playoff contention earlier this month.
Inter Miami’s announcement of the deal did not specifically mention Messi or any other player, though it would be surprising if Chinese officials agreed to the games without some sort of guarantee that the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner and the team’s other best-known standouts — Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba among them — would be making the trip if physically able.
“This will be a great opportunity to continue building on our 2023 campaign, in which we achieved our first-ever trophy,” Inter Miami sporting director and chief soccer officer Chris Henderson said in a release distributed by the team. “We will take this as an opportunity to begin our preparations for 2024, as we look to build on last season and find more success moving forward.”
If Messi — who led Argentina to the World Cup title last year — plays, it would be at least the eighth time he has traveled to China for exhibitions for club or country since 2005. Ticket for all previous Messi appearances have sold at a wild pace in China, a nation that has a massive soccer following even without much in the way of global success by the men’s national team. China’s women made the World Cup final in 1999, falling to the U.S. in a penalty-kick shootout to decide the title at the Rose Bowl in California.
